Perfectly Clear
by benignmilitancy
Summary: Something was wrong with Anderson, clearly, but he had a company to run. One-shot.


**Disclaimer: I don't own.**

**A/N: Just a little curious something-something I was thinking about as I was watching the movie on my Xbox... how would Thomas Anderson's former life be "missed" in the Matrix, if at all? This fic doesn't cover all of it but I thought it was interesting to write anyway.**

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_Perfectly Clear_

_Something was wrong with Anderson, clearly, but he had a company to run. One-shot._

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Something had been wrong with Anderson from the start. The minute he saw him sitting uncomfortably in the mahogany seat across from his Rhineheart knew there'd been something wrong with the kid. But he wasn't the type of man to recognize his mistakes right away; and when he did he was reluctant to acknowledge them. He hated thinking the leader of his own department wasn't good at reading people. He'd made an entire _career_ out of reading people, dammit.

What of the kid, all those years ago? He stared into the dull wood of his desk, pulling up a spare memory. A flighty look, in a coat too big for his lithe frame, hair combed too meticulously to the side—as if that row of jagged brown bangs wasn't used to submitting so easily to the scalp. Tapping foot. Fidgeting fingers. Nervous. Radiated nervousness. But then, everyone was nervous applying to Metacortex for the first time. As they should be.

On paper he really wasn't anything shining—community college degree, no connections, no recommendations, nothing to indicate the kid knew anything about the world and the people in it—but when Rhineheart asked him about his interest in the company something visible flared inside him. Something lit up; something so rare shone through that he beat out the seven MIT graduates sitting in the marble lobby.

He was genuine.

He knew there'd been a bit of a smear on the side of his... personal life... as far as sketchy activities went, but even he had to admit (and he wouldn't) the kid was brilliant. A freakin' godsend. An ideal employee, if a little bland. He would sit at conferences, saying nothing for two, three, four hours at a time, staring out the glass windows into the space beyond, as if absorbing everything they said and chewing it and swallowing it in that strange genius brain of his. And every solution he offered at the end—that solved whatever problem they'd been fussing over.

Everyone else in the company approached their problems the same way. Everyone was a scientist. Yet he knew insanity defined as expecting different results from same methods, and that was what they did. Every damned time. It was just lucky for them status quo was keeping them in the black.

And then it happened.

Every computer on the floor, locked down. Screens fizzled to black. Traces revealed nothing. No bugs. No viruses. Just a faint, fragmented piece of program that had wedged itself somehow into the software, latched onto the modem and infected each server.

Rhineheart remembered how they had ranted and raved, the faces of the higher-ups turning eight shades of red. How they yelled and blamed and threatened. How the lower rungs sat and took the brunt of their unsolicited wrath, and the hours ticked by—

Anderson suggested, quietly looking at his shoes on the floor, that the program's solution was the problem made negative.

When he called Anderson to his office the next day Rhineheart yelled at him for not speaking up. How much profit had they lost from him dragging his feet? How much green had the company dumped down the drain from the sheer _idiocy_ of one man alone? Something was wrong with him, clearly, but he had a company to run, god_ damn_ it.

And when the door closed behind the soft, dejected form, his frown softened, and he felt a little knot in his chest tighten. He really should ease up.

One of these days, he thought.

But not today.

People like him made the company run faster. Lose less time. Maybe, for a while, he'd felt he needed that little eccentric spark that brought his programmers out of their methodical stalemate.

Still. Anderson had his own problems. And so much of his time was already wasted on useless bullshit. Useless bullshit everyone thought important because someone higher up thought it vital. Lunch at two. Meeting at three. You—stay overtime. You—go home. You—get your stuff packed. You—out the door. All of them packed and sorted neatly into groups. The women politely avoiding the men, somehow astutely aware their presence is making them hard, and the men, sitting stiff and bored around the coffee machine, too tired to care, pretending to care. There was something animal about the arrangement, but Rhineheart could never ascertain what exactly it was.

Anderson was unstable. And like everything steeped in the unknown, he was both fascinated and repulsed by him. He'd had to watch for that. He could see long sleepless nights stain his eyes with rings of purple, stale cubicle days draining whatever color he'd had in his already whiter-than-paper face. Folks whispered that he was running some sort of illegal hacker ring, but when the boss stepped into the room, they shut their mouths. Who wanted to gossip about the maniac when the one who hired him could kick you to the curb? Rhineheart didn't know anyone like that personally, who pursued something to the point of insanity—but he'd heard, and read, of other companies going down from nutjobs like that. Sometimes the corporate wheel ground itself to dust. The unfortunate got crushed underfoot. _C'est la vie._

He'd hauled him into the office for stupid things, for trivial, endless minutiae that in the end shouldn't have mattered but mattered anyway because he was the boss, and _he_ had a boss, and so on and so forth. Anderson lived on Ramen noodles and Rhineheart on admittedly much better fare; but if either of them fucked up it was gonna be life on the street. So, like a father, he lectured to empty ears. _Don't do this, don't do that._ And it hadn't been as if Anderson had no ears. On his advice he'd cut his hair and stopped wearing Soundgarden T-shirts to Casual Fridays, because, well, things weren't _that_ casual.

But—what was so _wrong _with him? Every time he saw the boy he couldn't help but feel a strange, bitter taste in the back of his throat, like iron or fire, something hard and unformed. Anderson kept to himself. Didn't speak to anyone. Didn't cause trouble. Hell, didn't so much as sneeze around the water cooler. He was one of few who stayed overtime voluntarily—and once, Rhineheart had found him fast asleep on his desk, wearing his rumpled suit from the day before.

_Go home, kid._

A buzzer sounded. The low voice of his secretary, reminding him of just what the cat dragged in.

Rhineheart pressed the button.

"Yes. Send him in."

The door swung ajar.

Clean-cut but tired: always the paradox that unnerved him to see. He walked softly into the room, his footsteps moderate, noiseless. Hands clasped behind his back, as if he'd known in advance what he'd done this time, and was simply waiting for the reading of his charges. Or his lecture.

_Run._

"You seem to have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson."

_Run away._

"You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you."

_Far from here. _

"Obviously you are mistaken."

_Run away and go do whatever the hell it is you're gonna do and get the hell out of here and out of my hair and out of my company and out of my_** life**_—_

Why was he saying this? Everyone arrived late to work these days. It was practically_ fashionable_ to not show up till lunch break—

"This company is one of the top software companies in the world because every single employee understands that they are part of a whole. Thus, if an employee has a problem, the company has a problem."And here it comes again, the time to make himself intimidating and cold, hands folded mechanically underneath his chin. The words in his mouth not his own. Not his own. "The time has come to make a choice, Mr. Anderson. Either you choose to be at your desk, on time, from this day forward, or you choose to find yourself another job."

The window-wipers, squeaking against the glass. How stupid silence seemed.

"Do I make myself clear?"

A nod. Slight. Distant. The nod of a defiant son to a father.

_Yes. _

_Yes I'm going to run and leave you behind you ungrateful bastard— _

Why was the knot in his chest tightening?

"Yes, Mr. Rhineheart, perfectly clear."

Watching, as the heavy wooden door closed behind Anderson. The bitter taste in his throat fading, but harder inside. Lingering longer. Deeper.

Rhineheart's gaze hovered on the door, as if drinking in the suddenly empty space, then dropped to the keyboard, as he lifted his thin deft fingers to the keys and resumed the endless grind of his mortal coil.

_Perfectly clear._


End file.
